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Comparative Aesthetics
fect quiescence. The Nirvanic effect of such silence, it appears to me, would be much greater than is usually achieved, at least in popular performances. But, without some comprehension of Hindu ideals about the utterly quiescent nature of ultimate aesthetic value, the significance of such silence is lost on Western audiences. But use of such techniques in India, if not already common, would doubtless persuade more yogins who prefer non-musical approaches to Nirvana of the efficacy of music for approaching the ultimate goal.
Although Hindu philosophy tends to idealize location of the aesthetic in subjective quiescence perfectible normally only after death, many other theories about its nature and location have occurred. The enlightening insight of Gotama, the Buddha, consisted in finding "comfort" (enjoyment of the aesthetic) "wherever you go, stand, sit, or lie down" here and now, not by cessation of motion or extinction of desire but through a middle way between desiring more than you are going to get and desiring more stopping of such desiring than you are able to stop.1 This kind of yea-saying, so impalpable to his fellow Hindus that they perforce proceeded to interpret him as reaffirming extinction of desire, smoothed the way for his acceptance in China. The aesthetic may be experienced here and now if we will but assent to the present as just what we want. When one devotes full time to the art of fine (i.e., enjoying intrinsic value) living, interest in the arts may constitute irrelevancy. But Gotama too was typically Hindu in locating aesthetic value as something primarily subjective.
Chinese philosophy, even less familiar to Western thinkers, also recognizes art objects as artificial and prefers to seek the aesthetic in ordinary experiences. But the distinction between subjective and objective aspects of experience is itself something artificial and unnecessarily divisive. Generally speaking, Chinese civilization has idealized being natural and the interpretation of such naturalness in a relatively naive way. Myriads of thinkers have depicted the aesthetic in unique ways. Yet, whether mistaken or not, I detect a perva
111 sive attitude appreciative of the simple, ordinary, everyday experiences. Interest in distant objects and in subjective depths is equally missing or secondary. Aesthetic value is to be found in the present as it appears; if it appears as if in some real thing, such as bubbling tea, or as if in some inner feeling, as when one's sagging spirits are buoyed by tea, so be it. The aesthetic should be enjoyed however it presently appears, not explained away in terms of external forms or of subjective quiescence.
Even something so artificially formal as the Tea Ceremony is intended to remind us, and to reembody within us, something of the natural. "Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence.... It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life." 2 The rural Taoism of Lao Tzu, the familial Taoism of Confucius, and the urbanized Taoism of Zen Buddhism all reject the artificial and, perhaps excepting Confucian patronage of the arts including music, all locate the aesthetic in perfection of yea-saying to life as it presents itself. This is indeed an attitudinal perfection; but it is not an idealized perfect state, whether of formal harmony or of calmed desires. Life is imperfect so long as we want more than we will get; and no matter how smartly we scheme to construct some ideally perfect world in which to live, we only make ourselves miserable to the extent that we fail to appreciate actual appearances as they come. The aesthetic is to be located not in intuition of some supposed perfect quietude nor in emotional response to some supposed really beautiful thing but in an intuition of the actual present as being, self-evidently, the best that actually is.
IMPLICATIONS OF METAPHYSICAL
DIFFERENCES
Aesthetic theories imply, and are implied by, metaphysical theories. By cohering, aesthetic and metaphysical theories support
